The disclosed embodiments relate generally to the operation of content distribution systems, and amongst other things, to apparatus and methods for an open and closed package subscription.
A media distribution system may include retailers who provide multimedia services to subscribers. For example, a content provider that operates on a distribution network may provide content or services to one or more content retailers in communication with the network. In turn, the content retailers define channels based on the content or services, and packages based on different sets of channel. The content retailers, or in some cases another billing and customer service provider, then provides information about the packages to device users who then may select content or services to be received by a device, typically on a subscription basis. For example, a device user may select and/or subscribe to receive content or services that include multimedia content, clips, programs, scripts, data, customer services, or any other type of content or service.
The content retailers and/or billing and customer service providers, however, often have the need to change their offering of packages. For example, the content retailer may need to revise programming line-ups, or price structures, etc., to attract new subscriptions. A device user already having a subscription, however, may get annoyed if the subscription terms are changed arbitrarily. So, despite having solid motivations for changing subscription line-ups and pricing, the content retailer and/or billing and customer service provider risks offending current subscribers by doing so.
Thus, improved apparatus and methods are desired for managing changes to multimedia programming packages.